Victimized as a girl by a child molester who was never prosecuted, Carrie Holt has put the past behind her to become a successful writer, until a trip back to her hometown brings her face to face with her tormenter, now a celebrity, who will do anything to hide the truth. Simultaneous.
Crashing Down
By Meg O'Brien
DH Audio
Copyright © 1999
Meg O'Brien
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9781552041789
Chapter One
Holly Beach, New Jersey, 1971
The man was coming at her. Carrie knew what would
happen next. It had happened once before, and she had
tried to stay away from him since then, had tried to
squeeze herself into a tiny, invisible ball every Sunday
since then.
Outside in the church courtyard there were voices,
other children laughing as they arrived. Here in the
dim cold basement of the church everything was silent
except for the steady drip of a rusted pipe and the slow,
deliberate breathing of the man who was moving toward
her, blocking her path to the door.
"You came back," he said, and he smiled.
But she hadn't come back. Not on purpose. It was a
mistake. Carrie began to cry quietly, the tears still way
in the back, making her throat feel like there was something
stuck there, something huge and hard.
"I left my doll," she said, swallowing.
"You mean this?" He held Christy, her doll, beyond
her reach ... her beloved Christy, her best friend, the
only one she could talk to about the things he had done
to her. He said, "I found her for you, Carrie."
"Thank you," she whispered.
He held the doll farther away. Laughing, he pulled
Carrie toward him, a hand that smelled of shaving lotion
tugging at her head. Carrie's whole body was stiff
with fright, her neck a hard, unbending column. But he
was stronger, and he pulled her closer and closer.
"You give me a little kiss," he said, his voice sounding
funny and thick, "right here ... and I'll let you have
your doll."
She heard Christy drop to the floor as both of his
hands held her head, and he moved it back and forth
so her cheeks were forced to rub against the stiff, dark
material of his trousers. Carrie tried again to pull
away, but he held her fast. "Oh, yes," he moaned.
Carrie cried harder, not making any sound, the tears
flowing fast and wet down her cheeks. She couldn't
breathe. She was shaking so much she lost her balance,
and without thinking she reached out to steady herself
with both hands around the man's thighs.
His breath quickened; his hold tightened. "That's
right, Carrie, that's right."
Carrie stood like a statue, a tiny, six-year-old statue
with dark blond hair and bangs, in her best Sunday
dress—the only evidence of her pain the tears that
streamed down her face. She heard the sound of his
zipper, and then, "Good girl, Carrie, that's a good
girl." He said it the way her daddy did when her piano
lesson went well.
After he had finished with her he warned her not to
tell her daddy, because Daddy would be mad and he
wouldn't believe her. He made her rinse off her face
at the drinking fountain, the one for little kids like her,
the one she could reach, and then he wiped her face
with a paper towel from the janitor's bathroom across
the hall.
"You'd better get upstairs now," he said, smoothing
his hair and blotting spots on his suit that her tears
had made. He was like another person suddenly, his
face a little red, but more as if nothing had happened,
like Mommy after she had spanked Carrie for being
bad. She would say, "For God's sake, Carrie, there's
nothing to cry about now," as if once the spanking
was over, there wasn't any reason it should hurt anymore.
Carrie grabbed Christy from the floor and backed
away, then turned and stumbled up the stairs to the
Sunday school rooms. They were empty, and the bells
were ringing in the steeple. She ran down the hall toward
the big church, forgetting that she wasn't supposed
to run, wasn't supposed to make noise when she
came in late. She looked through the door from the
hallway and saw her Sunday school class, everyone
standing with hymnals in their hands. She saw her
daddy sitting at the organ, and heard him start to play
the song about daring to be a Daniel, and she didn't
know who Daniel was but she wished she were like
him, wished she were brave.
Instead, she felt dirty and sick as she looked at her
friends. She didn't belong with any of them. Turning,
she ran outside and down Atlantic Avenue, passing old
Mrs. Baker along the way, seeing her outraged face as
Carrie almost knocked her down, running as if the
devil were at her heels. That's what Mrs. Baker would
say to Carrie's mother, Alice, after church. She'd say
it on the phone, because Carrie's mother didn't go to
church, and her tone would imply that everything bad
that happened to the Holder family happened for that
very reason. She'd say, "You'd better do something
about that child, Mrs. Holder. Six years old, and out
on the streets when she should be in Sunday school!
And Mr. Holder giving all his time to the church the
way he does, you'd think there would be more discipline
in the home. Almost knocked me down and didn't
even stop to apologize ... like the devil was at her heels,
don't you know."
Carrie would get spanked for that when she got
home. For upsetting Mrs. Baker and embarrassing her
mother, mostly, and for not being in Sunday school.
"It's the second time you've pulled that, young lady,
and it had better be the last."
But she didn't know that now. Now she was running,
running toward home, running to where she thought
her mommy would hold her, where she thought she'd
be safe, stopping only once at the big old house on the
corner of Nineteenth Street to use the hose under their
high front porch to wash her mouth out, over and over
and over, even though it didn't do any good, didn't
wash any of it away. She wished the water were a
wave, that a wave would come up from the beach and
wash right over her, wipe her out, drown her, so this
would never happen again.
But the wave never came and Carrie didn't drown,
and it did happen again. And again. And again. So
that by the time she was ten and he would find her, no
matter how hard she tried to hide, when he would come
up behind her and press himself against her, a hand
slipping into her summer halter to squeeze her tiny
beginning breast, she felt nothing so much as numb.
She thought that this was simply the way life was.
And it never occurred to her to wonder, until much,
much later, why that should be so.
Continues...
Excerpted from Crashing Down
by Meg O'Brien
Copyright © 1999 by Meg O'Brien.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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